Dismantling the Rocket for painting - Work in Progress

Geek_Law

Supercharged
Joined
Jul 15, 2008
Messages
255
Location
Cornelius, OR
So I've got a painter all lined up, and just need to get the parts off the bike and up to Vancouver, WA to be painted. I got lots of great feedback regarding taking the bike apart, and it didn't sound too bad, so I've jumped in and went for it.

I'll keep adding pictures as I get more and more parts off.

Step 1: Remove the seat. Moderate to difficult. Approximately 6.5 hours work.





Ok, next I removed the bags, and then the rear mud guard. It actually was quite straight forward. There were some funky star shaped screws that I had to go and buy a special tool for, and then some of the bolts required a socket on both sides, slid through a little hole on the back side of the mud guard, but otherwise, very straight forward. Then I just unhooked the wires and slid them out of their little metal bendy clamps. Here are pics:







Maybe I should drive it around like this???


Side panels are next.
 
Ok, got the side panels off. They are indeed tricky. What you have is, first, unscrew the two bolts on each side ... and lift up and away, carefully. I don't want to list all the technical details here, but they are illustrated at page 17.9 of the R3 Manual. With Diagrams!


Here is each side, proof that I did it.





And here are the panels on the ground, with the other parts.
 
Hmmm ... there is something very strange afoot. Can any of our British comrades help me out here? Do you see those stickers on the rear side of the side panels and the mud guard? There is somebody's name on them.

In the USA we put the names of kids who are missing on the sides of milk cartons. I wonder if this is the same type of program in the UK.

Has anybody seen Chris Boffin. He went missing on November 18, 2004. What about Kev Bartlett, gone missing the same day, November 18, 2004.

Please help!









 
Juggernaut said:
Time to pull that airbox and go 3xK&N too.

I'm counting on the raffle to deliver my 3x K&N filter set. I'm also gonna pull the secondaries while I've got the tank off and the bike ripped half apart.

I'm looking forward to getting some pipes too. Travelguy said he'd hook me up, so I'm gonna go with the preds, but I don't know about timing just yet.
 
Juggernaut said:
QA inspector names.

Sorry Marcus. Your opinion is unwarranted and unwanted :lol:

I'm going with missing kids. :twisted:

Ok, back to work. Hmmm ... I guess I'll do the front mudguard now.
 
REGULATOR said:
I can't believe your going to paint over the rare and beautiful Graphite color.... :lol:

Amen. I like the heck out of that color.

And while you have those fenders off, you should put a good coat of rust proof underlay on them. A couple of our Brit friends have complained about rusting from underneath. That is what I am going to do this winter.

I can't yet bring myself to paint over my beautiful cardinal red/phantom black paint. I even asked a local custom painter, to a guy who does beautiful paint jobs on Harley's, how much it would be to paint mine all black and and he looked at me as if I had lost my mind.

I'm looking forward to seeing how you dismantle the gas tank.
 

I have to be honest. At this point I'm a little embarrassed about asking whether removing these panels was indeed a DIY project. It turns out that, with the aid of the trusty user manual (thanks Juggernaut), this is an extremely simple project.

Here is the front mud guard removed. All that is left now is the radiator shroud (which I have done previously) and the gas tank. I'm hoping the gas tank will be as simple as the other parts. We'll see.



I ordered one of Evilbob's slick bellypans, so that will be getting painted up too and should make the ghastly oil filter and waterpump area look ... errr ... less ghastly.





Unfortunately, the little sticker with the missing child's name is so far gone that we will never know who he was. God bless his soul.




 
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